Word of the Day

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday October 14, 2004

affray

\uh-FRAY\, noun:
A tumultuous assault or quarrel; a brawl.

Mounted encounters by armored knights locked in desperate hand-to-hand combat, stabbing and wrestling in tavern brawls, deceits and brutalities in street affrays, balletic homicide on the dueling field--these were the martial arts of Renaissance Europe.
--Sydney Anglo, The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe

An Irish soldier was stabbed with a boar spear by a German mercenary in 1544 during an affray that followed Henry VIII's capture of Boulogne.
--James Williams, "Hunting, hawking and the early Tudor gentleman," History Today, August 2003


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Affray comes from Old French esfrei, from esfreer, "to disquiet, to frighten."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday October 15, 2004

prima facie

\PRY-muh-FAY-shee; -shuh\, adverb:
At first view; on the first appearance.

adjective:
1. True, valid, or adequate at first sight; as it seems at first sight; ostensible.
2. Self-evident; obvious.
3. (Law) Sufficient to establish a fact or a case unless disproved.


Rather, they are the product of considerable artistry in the analysis and exposition of statistical data, giving the conclusions a prima facie credibility.
--Arnold R. Weber, "Keeping Management Awake," New York Times, June 10, 1984

With all rich men and women there is, of course, a substantial body of populist literature that concludes that their riches were won from the labor of others, or that the structure of capitalist society ensured that the rich would grow richer as the poor grew poorer, or that riches are prima facie evidence of unethical behavior.
--Robin W. Winks, Laurance S. Rockefeller: Catalyst for Conservation

Consumers pick up a CD at the store and think the difference between the 60 cents it takes to make a disk and the $16 retail price is prima facie evidence of gouging. But the dreary economic facts are these: Subtract all the costs and the overhead that serves to support other artists under the same roof, and the net profit that the record company retains is about 59 cents per CD.
--Randall E. Stross, "Napster nonsense," U.S.News & World Report, May 29, 2000


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Prima facie is from the Latin phrase meaning "at first appearance."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday October 16, 2004

undulant

\UN-juh-lunt; UN-dyuh-\, adjective:
Resembling waves in form, motion, or occurrence.

Finally he stood and moved to the side of the craft that had edged up to the freighter, his feet planted wide against the undulant rocking and swaying of the current.
--Tom Clancy and Martin Greenberg, Ruthless.com

The undulant landscape looks serene in every direction.
--Frances Mayes, Under The Tuscan Sun


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Undulant is from Late Latin undula, "a small wave," diminutive of Latin unda, "wave."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday October 17, 2004

convivial

\kuhn-VIV-ee-uhl\, adjective:
Relating to, occupied with, or fond of feasting, drinking, and good company; merry; festive.

The convivial atmosphere would continue on the way home, with a bag of toffees and more stories including, quite often, the story of How Grandpa Was Found.
--"The foundling who got a life and a history," Times, January 6, 2000

He hated to drink to excess, disliked convivial entertaining and had no gift for bonhomie.
--Stella Tillyard, Citizen Lord

Young Sam, steeped in the family's endless storytelling, confessions, musings about their aspirations, and bickering about politics, seemed destined to become happy and convivial.
--Andrew Hoffman, Inventing Mark Twain


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Convivial comes from Latin convivium, "a feast, entertainment, a banquet," from conviva, "a table-companion, a guest," from convivere, "to live with, hence to feast with," from com-, con-, with + vivere, "to live."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday October 18, 2004

maunder

\MON-duhr\, intransitive verb:
1. To talk incoherently; to speak in a rambling manner.
2. To wander aimlessly or confusedly.

[T]wo drunken couples . . . maunder in an all-too-familiar vein about love.
--Anatole Broyard, New York Times, April 15, 1981

It is a play with melodramatic themes, but García Lorca has put aside temptation to let it maunder, scream or otherwise let the emotions take over.
--Richard F. Shepard, "Stage: 'Bernarda Alba' Produced in Spanish," New York Times, November 23, 1979

As in one of his earlier novels , . . . Kerr invents a credibly grim scenario for our future: most of the earth's inhabitants are infected with a deadly virus and maunder in fetid cities.
--Charles Flowers, "Blood on the Moon (Really!)," New York Times, February 14, 1999


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Maunder is perhaps a dialectal variant of meander (possibly influenced by wander).

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday October 19, 2004

corpulent \KOR-pyuh-luhnt\, adjective:
Very fat; obese.

He grew ever more corpulent and suffered from "a variety of physical ailments aggravated by the greasy Tennessee food."
--Scott Morris, "Keeper of the Flame," National Review, April 28, 2001

She admonished the character played by the corpulent Welles to "lay off the candy bars."
--Peter B. Flint, "Marlene Dietrich, 90, Symbol of Glamour, Dies," New York Times, May 7, 1992


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Corpulent comes from Latin corpulentus, "fat, stout, corpulent," from corpus, "body."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday October 20, 2004

popinjay

\POP-in-jay\, noun:
A vain and talkative person.

One popinjay shrieking from the left and another from the right about last week's headlines is not the whole of Washington's political dramas. Occasionally, American politics is more complicated and more momentous.
--R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., "Feds Go Drug Crazy," American Spectator, May 26, 2000

A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay.
--Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

The dignified, high density of personality of [Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart] is completely missing from our popinjay contemporary actors.
--Camille Paglia, Salon, March 1998


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Popinjay is from Middle English papejay, popingay, meaning "parrot," from Old French papegai, deriving ultimately from Arabic babagha.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday October 21, 2004

vatic

\VAT-ik\, adjective:
Of or characteristic of a prophet or prophecy; prophetic; oracular.

[He] needs to be reminded that . . . his poetry is just that -- poetry, not the vatic revelation of spiritual truth.
--Ruth Franklin, "Black Milk of Language," New Republic, December 25, 2000

One encounters plenty of vatic pronouncements in the pages devoted to, among others, Muriel Rukeyser, Kenneth Rexroth, William Everson, H. D. and Olson.
--William H. Pritchard, "Eliot, Frost, Ma Rainey and the Rest," New York Times, April 2, 2000


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Vatic comes from Latin vates, "a prophet, a soothsayer, a seer."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday October 23, 2004

caterwaul

\KAT-uhr-wawl\, intransitive verb:
1. To make a harsh cry.
2. To have a noisy argument.

noun:
A shrill, discordant sound.
John met Angela head-to-head and there was a lot of bellowing and caterwauling.
--Matthew Parris, "Prescott grapples with his feminine side," Times (London), December 14, 2000

In the early days, when people were still shocked by the novelty of cursing, screaming, caterwauling emotional incontinents attacking each other on stage, he [Jerry Springer] used to produce high-falutin' justifications for the show.
--Paul Hoggart, "Paul Hoggart's television choice," Times (London), December 9, 2000

The forest silence is impermeable, entirely undisturbed by the soft bell notes of hidden birds, the tick of descending leaves and twigs or soft thump of falling fruit, or even the far caterwaul of monkeys.
--Peter Matthiessen, African Silences


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Caterwaul is from Middle English caterwawen, "to cry as a cat," either from Medieval Dutch kater, "tomcat" + Dutch wauwelen, "to tattle," or for catawail, from cat-wail, "to wail like a cat."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday October 24, 2004

acerbic

\uh-SUR-bik\, adjective:
Sharp, biting, or acid in temper, expression, or tone.

But more than that, he is a social critic, and an efficient one, acerbic and devastating.
--Benoit Aubin, "Quebec's King of Comedy," Maclean's, August 27, 2001

Since I started out as a writer many years ago, I have built a reputation as an acerbic, mean-spirited observer of the human condition.
--Joe Queenan, My Goodness: A Cynic's Short-Lived Search for Sainthood

Joey gained a reputation as a smart aleck adept at delivering acerbic one-liners.
--"Joseph Heller, Author of 'Catch-22,' Dies at 76," New York Times, December 14, 1999


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Acerbic comes from Latin acerbus, "bitter, sour, severe, harsh."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday October 25, 2004

heterogeneous

\het-uh-ruh-JEE-nee-uhs; -JEE-nyuhs\, adjective:
Consisting of dissimilar elements, parts, or ingredients -- opposed to homogeneous.

According to the historian Albert Fein, New York embodied "the challenge of a democratic nation's capacity to plan for and maintain an urban environment to meet the needs of a uniquely heterogeneous population."
--Robert A. M. Stern, et al., New York 1880

He worked texture and color into the mortar and cement with heterogeneous bits of found junk, from seashells and stones to busted chunks of Phillips' Milk of Magnesia bottles.
--Gene Santoro, Myself When I Am Real

Fragmentation was inevitable within such a heterogeneous group, whose members had little in common.
--Lilia Shevtsova, et al., Yeltsin's Russia


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Heterogeneous derives from Greek heterogenes, from heter-, "other, different" + genos, "kind."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for heterogeneous

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday October 26, 2004

rodomontade

\rod-uh-muhn-TADE; roh-duh-; -TAHD\, noun:
Vain boasting; empty bluster; pretentious, bragging speech; rant.

These are rejoinders born out of a need to deflate a balloon filled with what others view as pomposity or rodomontade.
--Corey Mesler, "Dispatch #1: Buying the Bookstore (The Early Days)," ForeWord, August 2000

The very absurdity of some of his later claims (inventors of jazz, originators of swing) . . . has made him an easy target in a way far beyond anything generated by that other (and in some ways quite similar) master of rodomontade, Jelly Roll Morton.
--Richard M. Sudhalter, Lost Chords

. . . the me-me-me rodomontade of macho rap.
--Nicholas Barber, "In the very bleak midwinter," Independent, January 7, 1996

But what he said -- that if any official came to his house to requisition his pistol, he'd better shoot straight -- was more rodomontade than a call to arms or hatred.
--William F. Buckley, Jr., "What does Clinton have in mind?" National Review, May 29, 1995


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Rodomontade comes from Italian rodomontada, from Rodomonte, a great yet boastful warrior king in Italian epics of the late 15th - early 16th centuries. At root the name means "roller-away of mountains," from the Italian dialect rodare, "to roll away" (from Latin rota, "wheel") + Italian monte, "mountain" (from Latin mons).

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday October 27, 2004

hoary

\HOR-ee\, adjective:
1. White or gray with age; as, "hoary hairs."
2. Ancient; extremely old; remote in time past.

Once upon a time, memoirs were written by hoary chaps casting rheumy glances back towards their golden youth: no more.
--Erica Wagner, "Post-Post-Modern memoir," Times (London), July 19, 2000

Had Mozart lived to the hoary old age of 73, he might indeed have fallen out of favor in an era besotted with Rossini, becoming a "largely forgotten, neglected, unperformed composer."
--Marilyn Stasio, "Crime," New York Times, June 23, 1996

Mr. Weicker spends most of his time serving up hoary war stories and settling old political scores.
--Jeff Greenfield, "Politically Imprudent," New York Times, June 18, 1995

Compare that with the elements of a musical in about 1920: the star in a cliche story that was merely a framing device for generic musical numbers, hoary joke-book gags, and the usual specialty performers in a staging more often than not by a hack.
--Ethan Mordden, Coming Up Roses


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Hoary derives from Middle English hor, from Old English har, "gray; old (and gray-haired)."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday October 28, 2004

foundling

\FOWND-ling\, noun:
A deserted or abandoned infant; a child found without a parent or caretaker.

Some of her desires were more altruistic: she wanted to "send Phyllis to school for a year, take Auntie May for a winter in the Isle of Pines," and "raise foundlings."
--Tim Page, Dawn Powell: A Biography

Then one day her daughter returns home with a foundling, an abandoned baby boy.
--Charles R. Larson, Washington Post, September 26, 1999


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Foundling comes from Old English foundling, fundling, from finden, "to find" + the suffix -ling.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday October 29, 2004

cavort

\kuh-VORT\, intransitive verb:
1. To bound or prance about.
2. To have lively or boisterous fun; to behave in a high-spirited, festive manner.

. . . Enkidu, who was seduced by gradual steps to embrace the refinements of civilization, only to regret on his deathbed what he had left behind: a free life cavorting with gazelles.
--Yi-Fu Tuan, Escapism

But why struggle with a term paper on the elements of foreshadowing in Bleak House when I could be cavorting on the beach.
--Dani Shapiro, Slow Motion

By 1900, Leo-Chico would have been thirteen years old, and just past his bar mitzvah, or old enough to know better than to cavort with street idlers and gamblers.
--Simon Louvish, Monkey Business

The men spent the next few weeks there drinking beer, eating hibachi-grilled fish, and cavorting with the young ladies.
--Robert Whiting, Tokyo Underworld


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Cavort is perhaps an alteration of curvet, "a light leap by a horse" (with the back arched or curved), from Italian corvetta, "a little curve," from Middle French courbette, from courber, "to curve," from Latin curvare, "to bend, to curve," from curvus, "curved, bent."